SuperWASP - Wide Angle Search for Planets

SuperWASP is the UK's leading extra-solar planet detection program comprising of a consortium of eight academic institutions which include Cambridge University, the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, the Isaac Newton Group of telescopes, Keele University, Leicester University, the Open University, Queen's University Belfast and St. Andrew's University. It is expected that SuperWASP will revolutionise our understanding of planet formation paving the way for future space missions searching for 'Earth' like worlds.

SuperWASP consists of two robotic observatories. The first, SuperWASP-North is located on the island of La Palma amongst the Isaac Newton Group of telescopes (ING). The second, SuperWASP-South is located at the site of the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO), just outside Sutherland, South Africa. The observatories are identical and consist of 8 wide-angle cameras that simultaneously monitor the sky for planetary transit events. A transit occurs when a planet passes in front of its parent star temporarily blocking some of the light from it (see the How it works section). By continuously imaging the sky, SuperWASP can detect these changes in brightness and infer the presence of a planet.

A new wide-field survey of the sky has made its first major discovery - two planets orbiting far-distant stars.

The SuperWasp project uses camera lenses and super-sensitive detectors to monitor stars for tiny dips in light that might betray a passing planet.

The UK-led project identified a number of "suspects" and then handed the data to a French observatory for checking.

It used an instrument to analyse the light from the stars in detail and confirm the presence of the planets.

"To get these two we had to survey about 1.1 million stars and then go though several stages of filtering. It's a bit like panning for gold," Professor Andrew Collier Cameron from the University of St Andrews told BBC News.

The two extrasolar (outside our Solar System) planets, now known as Wasp-1b and Wasp-2b, are in the constellations of Andromeda and Delphinus.